by Anne Perry
“Help me!” she cried as soon as she saw Tathea. “Help me! He’s hurt! He’s bleeding badly!”
For a moment Tathea could not move. The crumpled child, legs and body stained with blood, hurled her back into the tearing loss of the past. She was looking at Habi again, her eyes knowing he must be dead, her heart refusing to believe it and already the grief piercing her with hurt beyond bearing.
Kori moved—no more than a twitch of semiconsciousness.
It broke the spell. Tathea flung herself across the floor which was littered with branches and leaves and other debris of the storm. She knew much of medicine. It was a Shinabari art. She pushed Dulcina away and swiftly ran her hands over the child’s body, seeking the site of the bleeding and searching for broken bones.
“Get me cloth!” she ordered. “Something light and smooth that won’t get caught in the open flesh. Quickly.”
“What are you doing?” Dulcina demanded.
“I’m going to stop the bleeding first,” Tathea answered without looking up. The wavering light made it difficult to be certain, but it seemed as if his torso was unhurt. The bleeding appeared to be from the legs, one of which was definitely broken. The gash was deep, and around him lay several long shards of broken glass, all splashed with scarlet. He was very small, his body lying curled over so she could have cradled him like a baby, and his limbs were so slender her fingers would close around his arms.
“Cloth!” Tathea demanded sharply.
At last Dulcina responded. She tore her own skirt and held out the pieces.
Tathea rolled one into a pad and with the other tied it over the deepest wound. The rain was lashing in through the shattered window. The floor was wet. “What happened?”
“Is he going to be all right?” Dulcina stared at her.
“I think so.” She kept her voice steady. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. He must have woken up and come down here. I didn’t know until I heard the glass break. I couldn’t sleep. I came instantly and found him. He must have been dreaming.” Dulcina shook her head, pushing her hair out of her eyes. The wind was driving in, and it was bitter cold. She was shuddering as she spoke, her teeth chattering. “He never comes down alone! It’s the storm.”
Itureus was on the stairs. “What is it?” he asked, coming into the room. Then he saw Kori and ran forward. He stared at Dulcina, then at Tathea, wordless with fear.
“The window blew in,” Tathea said quietly. “I think he’s going to be all right, but we must keep him warm, set the broken bone in his leg, and keep the wound from bleeding.”
Dulcina went to pick him up. Tathea held her arm hard, hurting her. “No, you’ll make it worse. Get me something to splint the leg. Anything straight and firm will do.”
Obediently Dulcina stood up and began to look around for something.
Itureus reached for a slender-legged chair and in one movement snapped off one of the legs and handed it to Tathea.
“Have you any herbs for cleaning wounds or for restoring strength?” she asked, taking the wood from him. “And I need more clean linen cut in strips for binding.”
Dulcina was shaking with fear. Her face was twisted with anguish and almost without color, as if it were her own life seeping away. Tathea felt for her with a pain Dulcina was unaware of; it was too raw a wound to share with anyone. Tathea worked quickly and alone in the face of Dulcina and Itureus’s ignorance of subtler medicine. Ishrafeli was apparently asleep, and there was no purpose in disturbing him. She did not need his counsel in this. It was one of the few practical arts of which she was mistress. No Shinabari was considered too noble to learn it, certainly not the daughter of a desert prince.
It took her an hour to bathe the wound with cloths soaked in an infusion of herbs she found in the kitchen. She splinted the leg, packing the raw edges of flesh with a cleansing paste made from crushed leaves and berries she hoped were of the same genus as the ones she knew. Then she prepared a lightly restorative drink and gave it to Dulcina to feed to Kori. All this time she kept him as warm as possible, wrapped in blankets.
When she finally went back to bed, she was wet and shuddering with cold and drained with the horror of seeing an injured child, holding him in her arms. She crept under the covers and pulled them tight about her. Outside, the wind seemed less, but she no longer cared. She felt the slow, hot tears run down her cheeks in grief that could not be eased. She thought of the child she could not heal.
When she awoke it was already day. The room was filled with a green, sickly light. All around her through the windows she could see a sky shredded with clouds. She rose and wrapping a blanket over her shoulders, went to the window and stared out. The bells had been removed from all the church towers. They looked bare, bereft. The only sound was the thin wail of the wind and the boom of water crashing against the sea walls and the white surf exploding.
Her first thought was of Kori. She washed and dressed hastily and went down to see how he was.
In the main room she found Itureus and Ishrafeli. They were beginning to clean up the shattered glass and the debris.
“Is the storm over?” she asked, looking around to see how best to help them.
“No,” Itureus answered with a slight, wry smile. He pushed a weary hand through his hair. “This is the lull before the heart of it strikes. I fear Patro is right after all and it will be one of the worst we have known. There is something in the color of the sky, the smell of the wind, which is different.”
Ishrafeli glanced at Tathea, then away again. He was busy picking up branches and leaves, but his attention was not on it.
Tathea stood still. “Worse than last night?”
“Yes. That was only the preliminary,” Itureus answered grimly. “The real storm is still out there. I should say two or three hours away.”
“Then we must board that window.” Ishrafeli straightened up and walked over to it, staring at the garden where several trees were down, even within the shelter of the walls. He frowned, as if something in the garden troubled him.
Tathea went to where the branch lay which must have broken the glass that had been the cause of Kori’s injury. A heavy stoneware jar also lay among the glass fragments. The lid was broken, but the jar itself, exquisitely simple in shape and colored pale blue and green like the sea grasses, was only chipped. She felt a sudden regret for its loveliness. Perhaps with skill it could be mended. She would have to find the missing chips before they were swept up and thrown away with the other wreckage.
She righted the jar, placing it where it could not be knocked over again and began to search. At first she examined the floor where it had fallen, then in slow circles she searched wider and wider, without finding them. She had actually given up and was helping Ishrafeli nail up the boards when she saw them. She was standing outside the window on the stone paving because the boards needed to be fixed externally or they would merely blow in again. She looked down, and the pale, triangular pieces caught her eye. Puzzled to see them there, she bent down to examine them: four small chips of stoneware, bone pale on two sides, pale blue and green on the third. There was no mistaking them.
Ishrafeli was waiting. She slipped the pieces into her pocket and then returned to her task of handing him the long iron nails one by one.
They had finished only a few minutes when Patro returned, his long robe torn and stained. There was no mistaking his fear or his urgent, painful anxiety. He made no attempt to hide it, speaking immediately to Itureus.
“It is worse than before. I know the wind has dropped now, but the sea is higher than we’ve ever seen it. If I stood on the old high water mark, it would be over my head. When the wind comes again, we may not survive it. Please come and judge the defenses before it is too late. The people need you. I’ve done all I can, but I don’t know the sea as you do.”
Dulcina appeared in the doorway, her hair loose on her shoulders, her face pale, and dark shadows under her eyes.
“You can’t go!” Her v
oice was strident with fear and anger. She swung round to Patro. “He’s led you all these years without ever once thinking of himself. He’s labored out there on the defenses hour after hour, day and night, to keep you from destruction. Now it’s your turn for the danger and the cold, and for your family to wait, alone, never knowing if you’re coming back or not!” She jerked her hands. “It’s your turn for your wife and children to face the storm without you to help or comfort them. Go away and leave us! Your place is out there!” She flung her arms wide. “Not here, bothering us!”
“My dear,” Itureus began, but she faced him with blazing eyes, and he stopped and looked at Patro. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “What my wife says is true. You should have more faith in yourself.”
“It is not like other storms,” Patro argued, desperation naked in his blue eyes. “We need you!”
“We need him too!” Dulcina took a step towards Patro. “Kori is hurt, badly. His leg is broken and he has bled for hours. Itureus cannot leave.”
Patro’s face was very white, but he did not retreat. “I am sorry,” he said with deep sincerity. “But the sea knows no compassion—”
“So you don’t either?” she cut across him wildly, her eyes glittering.
“It means I will do all I can to save Bal-Eeya,” he answered, but he looked as if she had struck him, so white was his young face. “All of us, not just a family here or a house there. Itureus has wisdom I lack.”
Itureus looked at his wife, then at Patro, then back at his wife. “My son is injured,” he said huskily, emotion tearing at him. “I cannot leave now.”
Dulcina sighed, and her body seemed to release a little of its terrible tension.
Suddenly Ishrafeli spoke. “I’ll come with you,” he offered Patro. “I don’t know Bal-Eeya, but I know the sea. I can be of some help.”
“Thank you,” Patro accepted, but it was courtesy, not relief. Ishrafeli was a stranger. Patro barely looked at him. It was Itureus he needed.
Tathea felt cold, even though the window was boarded up. The wind was sharper again. The calm was coming to an end. She hunched her shoulders and pushed her hands into the pockets of her borrowed tunic. Her fingers met the chips from the vase.
“Kori was hurt,” she said, looking at Patro. “Very badly. He could have been killed. A branch came through the window, shattering the glass and knocking over a great jar which stood inside. He broke his leg and it bled a great deal.” Her voice choked. “He is only small.”
Patro accepted defeat. The rising wind told him he had no time to argue. “I’m sorry. That is terrible. There are a few trees down but not any others in walled gardens.”
Ishrafeli looked at Tathea quickly, then at the window, his eyes questioning.
She pulled the chips out of her pocket. They had been outside, not inside where the vase was. The branch was too long to have come through the frame of the window except end first, but it had not lain that way on the floor. If it had knocked the vase over, then the chips would have been inside. Someone had gone out and used the vase to break the window. Without the chips no one would ever have known. Itureus or Dulcina? She knew the answer before the question formed, even though her mind rejected it. She could never have hurt her child to keep her husband with her! But then she had not loved Mon-Allat. She could not have injured Habi even to save her own life!
She looked at Dulcina and saw the truth in the hollow of her eyes.
Should she speak? How bad was the storm? Would it really drown Bal-Eeya, or was Patro simply a man afraid of a task he had not yet tried?
“Is it really worse than before?” she said aloud.
Dulcina stared at her. “No, of course it isn’t!” she snapped. “Patro is afraid, that’s all. He doesn’t want the burden of responsibility. Now that it’s on him, he realizes how heavy it is. He wanted the glory and the pride, but he doesn’t want the cost if he fails, or the danger. Can’t you see that?”
As if to answer her, the wind dropped its tone.
“Yes, it is worse,” Itureus said quietly, his mouth tight and pinched. “It is there in the color of the sky. When it breaks, it will be terrible.”
“How do you know that when others don’t?” Tathea argued. “It sounds as if it’s blowing out.”
He gave a little shrug, rueful, sad. “You don’t know the sea as I do,” he said wearily. “I can smell the heaviness and feel the shift in the pattern of it.”
“Then you should go.”
He looked past her to Dulcina. “I can’t,” he said. “Not this time. I owe ...”
Tathea held out the chips in the palm of her hand. “I found these outside on the stone paving.”
“What are they?”
“Pieces of the vase which was broken ... when it was used to smash the window which injured Kori ...”
There was no sound in the room but the moan of the wind. Dulcina stared at Tathea with a searing hatred.
Itureus looked from Tathea to his wife. His eyes betrayed his knowledge and his pain. For long seconds he struggled to decide.
“I must go,” he said at last, his voice soft and filled with hurt.
Without another word he walked out ahead of Patro. Ishrafeli followed.
Dulcina turned to Tathea, her eyes dark holes in her head, filled with knowledge and hatred. Tathea sensed in them an infinite understanding of weakness and fear and need, and a blind incomprehension of honor. She had used every power she had to keep him, and it had failed. She had wanted Itureus to love her before all else, even his own soul.
She raised her arm. In her hand she held another jar. She smashed it against the table and held up the jagged end.
“You have taken from me what I wanted most,” she said through gritted teeth. “I shall destroy you for that.” But she did not move.
Outside the wind rose again and the pitch changed.
Tathea stepped backwards. She must get out of the house. She would rather be crushed by the wind or drowned by the sea than face that monstrous hatred. It was like being with Cassiodorus again. It dizzied her senses and made her limbs heavy.
She backed into a stool, bruising her legs.
Dulcina started to laugh. “You won’t escape me! I’ll find you wherever you go. I’ll find you again and again, forever.” She came forward slowly.
Tathea fumbled for the door and threw it open.
Dulcina fell against the stool herself, and the shard of glass cut her arm. The flesh was spongy, bloodless, like old rubber.
Tathea flung herself out of the house. She started to run. The wind tore at her, whipping her hair into her face, blinding her. She was blown to her knees, grazed and bleeding. The sound of the wind was like nothing she had ever heard before, not a shriek anymore, but a deep-toned roar like the sound of a great organ, and it filled the air.
She climbed to her feet and plunged on, weaving as if she were drunk, falling again. She crawled up the breast of the hill on her hands and knees, clinging to the grass, dragging her body to the crown. Ahead of her was a sight which transfixed her with its obliterating power. The eye of the storm lay dark over the moiling face of the ocean. The sky was cocooned in clouds drawn out like shadows strung round to encircle Bal-Eeya in a violence that sucked up everything that dared lift itself from the hard surface of the ground. The water rose in huge, gray walls of fury, towering like moving mountains till they overbalanced and crashed in torrents of boiling spume. It was like the wrath of creation itself, as if it would destroy and remold the earth.
Tathea dared not move. She huddled like an animal, crouching flat to the ground, grasping it with her hands, her face hidden. Even if Dulcina had found her, she could not have moved. All day the storm roared around her, the sky ripped across with lightning, the earth battered by the wind and devoured by the raging sea.
With the fading of the light, the violence finally exhausted itself. The last clouds shredded purple and indigo across the west, and the arc of the sky became limpid aquamarine. Tathea was so co
ld she could barely move. Her limbs ached, and her muscles were locked. To move shot her whole body through with pain.
It was Ishrafeli who found her. She did not see him until he was kneeling beside her. He lifted her, easing her racked body over, holding her in his arms. In the wan light of the sinking sun he looked exhausted. His black hair was wet, and his face was marked with strain, the lines around his eyes and lips deeply etched.
“Is it over?” she asked, her voice rough, her body shuddering with cold.
He held her carefully, rocking her a little, moving her limbs gently from their agonized crouch. “Yes, until next time. But I think there will not be another one like this again, not here.”
“Somewhere else?” she said, searching his face, fearing she knew what he meant.
“Oh yes,” he answered. “There will be many such storms, in different ways.”
She said nothing for several minutes. He took her stiff, aching legs and rubbed the life back into them, kneading her muscles with his fingers, then her arms, until at last she felt able to move. He stood up, helping her to her feet, taking her weight, and she turned to look at the shore. The sea was a strange, pellucid green, heaving as if still troubled far beneath its surface, but there were no white breakers, and the golden splash of sunset stained a path across it right up to the wreckage of the strand.
“But Bal-Eeya will be all right?” she asked him. She had been here such a short time, and yet it mattered fiercely.
“Yes.” His voice was grave. “There are many injured, and some dead, but without Itureus’s wisdom they would all have been lost.”
“Dulcina is ... she tried to ...” She found it curiously difficult to tell him, to bring it from fear into the reality of words. “Like Cassiodorus.”
“I know.” He looked at her very directly. His eyes were so dark they looked black in this surreal light. “You were warned it would have cost.” He was very close to her. The strength of his hand on her arm rippled through her. He urged her forward through the sea grasses back towards Bal-Eeya and the harbor where the skiff was waiting. This was not what she had sought; part of it perhaps, but not all. They must go on, out onto the waiting sea again. Her body ached, every step hurt, but she lengthened her stride to walk beside him, and he let go of her arm and took her hand instead.